r--those who
live to crawl--their bones picked clean by its merciless fingers. To
push on now, with the rainy season setting in, meant certain death.

"The second day he paid the price and fell ill. He complained of his
feet--the tramp had knocked him out, he said. I examined his toes, cut
out some poisonous wood ticks that had buried themselves under the skin,
and put him to bed. Fever then set in, and for two days and nights
I thought he would go under. During the delirium he kept repeating a
woman's name, begging her to give him a drink, to lift his head so he
could look into her eyes. Once I had to hold him by main force to keep
him from following this fancy of his brain into the forest. When he
began to hobble about once more he again wanted to push on, but I
determined to hold onto him. I was alone at the time--that is, without
a white companion, Judson having gone down to Zanzibar with some
despatches for the company--and his companionship was a godsend.

"What seemed to worry him most after he got well was his enforced use
of my wardrobe and outfit. He had brought little of his own except his
clothes and some blankets, and no arms of any kind but the revolver
he carried around his waist in a holster. All his heavier luggage, he
explained, was at a landing below. This objection I met by promising
to send for it by the first band of carriers after the rainy season
was over. In the meantime he must, I insisted, use my own guns and
ammunition, or anything else that my kit afforded.

"Up to this time he had never mentioned his home or the names of any of
his people, nor had he offered any explanation of his choice of Africa
as a hunting ground, nor did he ever seek to learn my own impressions
regarding his self-imposed exile (it was really exile, for he never
hunted a single day while he was with me), except to ask me one morning
in a casual way, whether anything he had said in his delirium had made
me think the less of him--all of which I laughed at, never mentioning,
of course, what I had been obliged to hear.

"One night, when a tropical storm of unusual severity was passing, I
found him sealing a letter at my table with the aid of a lantern held
close. Presently he got up and began pacing the floor, seemingly in
great agitation; then he reached over, picked up the letter from the
table, lighted one end of it in the blaze of the lantern, dropped it to
the floor, waited until it was entirely consumed, and then p